Communication is essential for successful leaders who operate in the real estate industry, where collaboration is a necessity. A leader must know how to effectively practice their advocacy, express their opinions, and ask questions.

An important part of developing good communication with your team is knowing advocacy and putting it into practice. A good leader knows how to express the right judgments, feelings, thoughts, and be able to call for action and issue orders. A leader also should know how to ask questions to gain information for the improvement of the situation.

In any interaction, the balance of advocacy and inquiry shapes communication:

• One-way communication is when a person presses their thoughts hard but does not truly hear, it is as if they are just speaking to you instead of properly communicating. You may receive the information, but it may feel that you’re not being heard or that your own thoughts don’t count. Most of the time, people are stubborn to listen and understand, because they feel like they are being dictated to.
• One-way communication from the other side is when a person asks too many questions but hides their own ideas, whether partially or completely, and it can feel like being interrogated. You may not know what they're actually trying to find out, and it can make you feel uncomfortable.
• Then there are also situations when people watch but contribute just a little, and everyone just feels like they just want to stay silent and not share so much or at all. Sometimes, listening only works. However, most of the time, the many good ideas of those who only listen are not brought to the table.
• Good communication is a two-way street. When someone is not only open to what they think but also cares about what others think, too, that's where you’ll find the sweet spot. This is when the team has a proper conversation and is able to pick up something from each other, which results in a good collaboration between the leader and the team. 

Aside from balancing, having good, quality communication also matters. You cannot learn lessons or gain wisdom if the room is full of pessimism and dismissive ideas.. The "Ladder of Inference" guides high-quality advocacy and inquiry.

• High-quality advocacy: Provides supporting evidence and clearly articulates the reasoning process. In real estate, this might be explaining an investment proposal based on market analysis.
• High-quality inquiry: Seeks others' opinions actively, explores their thought processes, and seeks critical appraisal of one's opinion. This could be in the form of questioning a team about their strategies for retaining tenants and challenging their assumptions, for example.

Properly utilizing a mix of high-quality advocacy and inquiry can result in significant mutual learning and informed decision-making.

Breaking Down Professional Discourse

Strategies can also be employed to obtain professional discourse:

• Acknowledge Potential Blind Spots: Assume incomplete understanding and recognize others' potential insights.
• Assume Rationality and Professional Intent: Understand that others act based on how they logically assessed a situation.
• Investigate Underlying Rationales: Seek to understand the reasoning behind different approaches.

Effective advocacy involves:

• The support of gathered data: Clearly articulate supporting data, its interpretation, and the logical steps to conclusions.
• Exhibiting comprehension: By summarizing or paraphrasing other people’s views, to make sure you are on the same page.
• Focus on Consequences, and not the mistake: Properly communicate that you need to anticipate the negative outcomes if someone commits a mistake, and not simply blame it on the person.
• Expressing Concerns Responsibly: Focus on the outcome, and not the person involved.

Effective inquiry involves:

• Eliciting Supporting Evidence and Reasoning: Ask for the data and rationale behind others' views.
• Encouraging Constructive Critique: Invite others to identify weaknesses in one's own thinking.
• Seeking Explanations for Actions: Ask for the reasoning behind approaches in a way that shows openness.
• Understanding Others' Perspectives: Inquire about the factors shaping others' viewpoints.
• Promoting Self-Reflection: Seek feedback on unintentional contributions to challenges.

By integrating high-quality advocacy and inquiry, real estate leaders can foster productive dialogues, enhance understanding, and drive effective outcomes.

Bob Iger's leadership with Walt Disney is a great example of leadership by balancing a clear vision with active listening. This is evident in how they strategically tackle major acquisitions of online streaming while listening to the ideas and addressing the needs of the audience, subscribers, and even executives

Another example is The Project Management Institute (PMI), which focuses on transparent communication and stakeholder interaction. Frances Frei, a trust authority, emphasizes the value of genuine communication. And Daniel Kahneman's work on cognitive bias reinforces the value of cautious questioning to test assumptions.